Jesus didn’t do it for the ’Gram, but that didn’t stop a new social-media-friendly worship service from packing a coffee shop during an ongoing pandemic. On Sunday night, The Social Nash hosted what — judging from the Instagram pics and stories — appeared to be a shoulder-to-shoulder maskless crowd inside of West Nashville cafe Land of a Thousand Hills.
The event seemed tailor-made for the trend of Christian influencers — sorta fashionable white 20- to 30-something semi-hipsters who love to post staged pictures of prayers, workouts and lattes. And if you think such a gathering is irresponsible, well, the folks behind the streetwear sermons are quick to disagree.
“During a pandemic?” asked one commenter on their photo of the gathering.
“99+% survival rate in young adults, good thing it’s a young adult group right?!" they responded. They doubled down in another response:
We’re coming up on the 1 year anniversary of “2 weeks to stop the spread.” If you would like to stay away from people for the entirety of the time this virus is present (which will be forever)...then none of us will try & stop you. If self isolation is your cure, we don’t advise it, but we won’t shame you out of doing that.
They continued, saying society will need to eventually stop treating neighbors like “their breath might kill us” and also said children are “statistically better off” than young adults.
The comments from that back-and-forth exchange have been deleted.
While COVID-related deaths among young adults are rare, especially when compared to older people, the disease can still prove deadly, and young adults have also landed in intensive care or been put on ventilation. A report in the Journal of the American Medical Association on 3,222 adults ages 18 to 34 hospitalized with COVID-19 found that “during hospitalization, 684 patients (21 percent) required intensive care, 331 (10 percent) required mechanical ventilation, and 88 (2.7 percent) died.”
The Social did not respond to a request for comment via their Instagram account. The Social is associated with ZEAL Church.
This of course is not the first potential superspreader event associated with a worship service — a touring worship concert series packed the area in front of the Metro Courthouse in October.
Update: James Dutton, a co-host of The Social, responded to the Scene's request for comment and said donations raised at the event would help feed 2,000 people in Rwanda, who are starving during the pandemic.
